It took a fast-moving secretive deal in 2009 to persuade financial technology giant NCR to dislodge from its home in Ohio and move to Gwinnett County. Now the Fortune 500 company is involved in a flurry of back-channel negotiations to build a major corporate complex near Georgia Tech.
The Duluth-based company is in talks to put a major facility on the doorstep of the state’s top technology school, two individuals with direct knowledge of the situation told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday. For NCR, such a move would have many benefits, including a direct line to the highly skilled engineering and programming talent that graduate each year, the individuals said.
As part of a possible expansion of its operations, NCR could create as many as 1,000 additional jobs in the metro area, the individuals told the AJC. Negotiations have stretched over several months, though it’s unclear if the possible new campus would become NCR’s headquarters and whether other locations are also being scouted.
“As a matter of policy, we do not comment on rumors or speculation,” an NCR spokesman said in an emailed statement.
NCR has long cited Georgia Tech as one of the metro area’s strengths and a driver in its decision to move to the region. And in 2010, NCR Chairman and CEO Bill Nuti described the state’s “awesome” talent as validation for the firm’s move from Ohio.
NCR, which makes ATMs, self-service kiosks for companies including Delta Air Lines and scores of other technology products, became one of the biggest metro business stories of the Great Recession when the company decided to move its headquarters to metro Atlanta and open manufacturing facilities in Columbus.
The state provided more than $60 million in tax breaks for NCR when it relocated to Gwinnett County from its original home in Dayton, Ohio. The company also received lucrative incentives from Gwinnett.
It’s unclear how a complex near Georgia Tech might affect the company’s operations in Gwinnett, and the county’s chairman, Charlotte Nash, declined to comment.
NCR is working with economic development officials, Georgia Tech and the Georgia Tech Foundation to secure property near Tech’s Midtown Atlanta campus, the individuals said. In a statement, a Georgia Tech spokesman did not deny the report.
“Georgia Tech remains actively engaged with state and local partners to attract businesses to Georgia. It would be inappropriate to comment on a specific project,” said Matt Nagel, the school spokesman.
Brian McGowan, the president and CEO of Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development arm, also declined to comment.
The tech firm has long cited Georgia Tech as a top reason it relocated its headquarters to Duluth about five years ago and created and moved more than 2,000 jobs to the state. Nuti said he looked forward to partnering with the university, and then-Gov. Sonny Perdue said he anticipated that the firm would work with several Georgia Tech departments.
Almost a year before the 2009 move, Tech executives quietly met with NCR officials to scope out the company’s move and explore potential collaboration. Nuti now sits on Tech’s advisory board and shares hard-earned business lessons with students.
“The talent in this state is awesome. The talent in the city is awesome,” Nuti said in a 2010 talk to Georgia Tech students. “And this school is a great feeder system for talent for us. We were able to acquire really good quality people when we hired here in the Atlanta area.”
A new facility would be a boon for the city of Atlanta, which views Midtown as a tech hub and recently celebrated when companies such as Coca-Cola and athenahealth announced relocations of workers from outside the city to intown locations. PulteGroup, one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, also plans to move its corporate offices from suburban Detroit to Buckhead this summer.
Such a move by NCR would follow the recent corporate consolidation plan of another financial technology giant, Fiserv, which recently announced it would relocate from Gwinnett to new digs in the north Fulton city of Alpharetta.
NCR was founded in 1884 as the National Cash Register Co., and made the first mechanical registers. The company evolved into a financial technology giant, assisting the banking, retail and travel industries as well as governments. The company reported more than $6.1 billion in revenue in 2013 and has more than 29,000 employees.
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